Before personal computers became common, people used main frame computers via a terminal. Then the task of back-up of computer data was in the hands of computer operators whose job was to back-up data on a regular basis. After personal computers (PC) came in wide use, it has been the responsibility of each PC user to create his or her own back-up using floppy disks.
On the whole personal computer users are not that meticulous or methodical and care to back-up their computer data on a regular basis. There are several reasons for that. One reason is the discipline required to do periodic back-ups. Second reason is that one has to label and store the back-up floppy disks. Third, it does take significant amount of time to create a back-up, time that could be spent on other pressing tasks. Fourth, there is no immediate urgency to create a back-up as a computer system or a computer system component crash and potential loss of data is a risk not well understood by an average PC user.
Therefore, it is an objective of the present invention, to eliminate for PC users the burden of having, labeling and storing floppy disks for the back-up of data.
Another objective of the present invention is to create an automatic back-up of PC user""s data without the user taking any steps to create a back-up.
An internet based archive system that will back-up a PC user""s data files is disclosed. An archive server on the internet is used, whose exclusive function is to archive a PC user""s data. Internet facilitates movement of data files from one computer to another computer. In this case from a personal computer to a dedicated archive server. The archive server has mass storage devices for the archival storage.
When a user connects to the internet and uses the internet for checking mail and surfing the web, that internet connection is utilized only when the browser makes a datafile request to a server on the internet and when the datafile is being received from a server. There are time gaps on the internet connection, when the connection is in an idle state on the line from the personal computer to the internet.
These idle states of time on the PC user""s internet connection are used by a back-up software in the PC to effect an automatic back-up of data on PC""s disk without the PC user taking any overt steps to create a back-up or even be aware that a behind the scene back-up is automatically taking place.
The PC based back-up software has four functions of Archive Setup function, Archive Review function, Automatic Back-up function, and Manual Backup function.
The Archive Setup function enables the user to set up the parameters for the archiving of his data on the archive server. These parameters are the internet protocol (IP) address of the server that has been assigned for his archival, user identification that uniquely identifies him to the archive server, password for user authentication, identification of the disk(s) and directories that are to be archived. In addition, preferably, the user can specify an encryption key for encoding his data for security and the level of archive, which specifies how many levels or versions of data to archive.
The Archive Review function allows the user to interact with the archive server for the purpose of status and retrieval of archived data. It permits a user to get a list of recently archived files or, a tree structure of all archived files or delete archived files or retrieve files. It also permits a user to get statistical data such as Mega Bytes of storage used, total number of files and most recent date of update etc.
The Manual Backup function allows the user to specify the files that should be archived.
The Archive Setup, Archive Review and Manual Backup functions are initiated by the user, when ever the user needs to set or change set up parameters, backup data and review the data that has been archived. The Automatic Back-up function, on the other hand is automatically initiated on establishing a connection to the internet via the browser.
The Automatic Backup function senses the idle state of the connection to the internet by reading the browser fields that indicate the use status. A prominent browser field is the icon on the top right of browser window which visually indicates that internet data transfer is in progress. Another browser field is at the bottom of the browser window which indicates the status of data transfer. The idle state of the internet connection also may be available from the PC operating system which tracks the idle time and if that exceeds a threshold cautions the user and terminates the connection.
The Automatic Backup function uses and manages that idle time in finite time increments. The Automatic Backup function collects the directory file names and their date/time stamp and sends them to the Archive Server. The Archive Server compares the data to the existing archive status and generates a file upload command for those files that have a changed date-time stamp. The Automatic Backup function receives the file upload command from the Archive Server and uploads those files to the Archive Server.
For the transfer of datafiles between the personal computer and the Archive Server, existing technology of file transfer protocol is used. This technology is in wide use and transfers data between computers efficiently and quickly by breaking the data in blocks and performs error checking and handshake for a successful datafile transfer.
The Archive Server function respond to the PC based Automatic and Manual Back-up function, Archive Setup function and Archive Review function.